Description or Prescription? (Part Two)

A description = “This is what it is.” A prescription = “This is what it should be.” For more on how those two become confused, see Part One. But confusion is not always the issue.

Some on each side of this divide in my life (astride both the theologically-Evangelical Christian community and the LGBTQIA+ community) purposefully interchange the two.

Theologically, the failure to differentiate description from prescription is most damaging in Genesis 3:16-19. Portrayed as prescription, the passage is said to mandate misogynistic chauvinism by men, self-destructive subservience by women, and the restriction of all sexual activity to within cisgendered heteronormative monogamy.

But reading just a couple of previous chapters (Easily done, since there are only two previous chapters in the Bible.) makes it clear that Genesis 3 describes damage done by The Fall (i.e., humankind’s willful decision to deviate from the behaviors God Themself prescribes. The resulting heresy calls sinful any sexual conduct outside a “Biblical marriage,” presumably restricted to a legally-registered partnership between one man and one woman.

This presumption, however, requires us to ignore the claims of Jesus Christ as The Restorer of Creation. Rather than follow Jesus, they swear allegiance to living-out the damage done, as though this brokenness is somehow to be cherished and sanctified as “God’s will.”

If this narrow view of sexuality prescribes as blessedly normative what God Themselves describes as being tragically broken, then what is the prescription to which we should aspire in our sexuality and relationships? We’ll examine that next time. For now…

About the images: Our friend Spencer, celebrant of body-positivity and sex-positivity, not only intrigues us with discussions of polyamory, but inspires (and has helped us produce) some distinctly androgynous overlapping of sexuality and spirituality. Working with her again recently rekindled the blurring of our distinctions and the urgency of clarifying both the descriptions and prescriptions guiding our walk with Christ. These are from our crocheted halter fashion shoot, the larger set of which is available at the Crooked Container site under our name there.